Nova 6

Nova 6 is a biochemical weapon that was developed by Nazi and Soviet scientists during the later years of World War II and early in the Cold War. The weapon, consisting of the elements neodymium, rhenium, and sulfur, was developed in concentration camp laboratories and tested on detainees, with development starting in January 1944. By 1945, Nazi Germany had armed a battery of V-2 rockets with Nova 6, but the original Nova 6 test site in Poland was destroyed by heavy bombing. The compounds were moved from the Elbe River to a freighter in the North Sea, and the SS survivors sailed to the Arctic, where they rigged the ship with explosives and encamped at a research facility. In October 1945, the Soviets launched Operation Olympus, capturing the Nova 6 and holding off British commandos as they attempted to steal it for the Western Allies. The Soviets tested it on some Red Army soldiers, and, in 1959, General Nikita Dragovich gained the CPSU's approval to use Nova 6 as a first strike weapon against the United States in the event of a war. In Project Nova, Dragovich planned for the bombs to be activated by communist sleeper cells in the US state capitals as a part of the Soviet sleeper cell program, and they would be instructed by broadcasts from a numbers station. However, the CIA destroyed the Soviet Nova 6 base at Mount Yamantau and another base in Laos, and the numbers station was destroyed during the 1968 Rusalka crisis. The Nova 6 program was finally put to an end after the CIA destroyed its remaining facilities in the USSR, and the weapon was never a threat again.